A new set of Mexican legal revisions that would allow local and federal …

Last week, revisions to Mexican federal law took effect that give public authorities and law enforcement unprecedented ability to compel mobile phone companies to disclose real-time geographic data from mobile phone companies in a wide variety of cases.

The group of legal revisions, popularly known collectively online as the #LeyGeolocalización (Geolocalization Law), appears to be squarely aimed at expanding police power to fight drug violence and gangs in a massive conflict primarily fought along the United States-Mexico border for decades. As new data found from the ACLU and EFF shows, local law enforcement across the United States are likely routinely using a similar practice. The Mexican law codifies what local and federal government in the US have been doing in practice for years.

The bill passed the lower house of the Mexican parliament on March 1 by an overwhelming margin, 315 votes in favor, seven against, and six abstentions. The Mexican government and law enforcement have argued that they need more extensive surveillance power as a way to fight cartel-related violence and kidnappings.

Just before the bill passed, Alejandro Martí, the president of Mexico SOS, an advocacy group fighting against violence and kidnapping, reminded Mexican lawmakers that his group had initially proposed the law 10 months ago. Martí’s son was murdered on his way to school in 2008.

"Unfortunately, yesterday [February 28] marks 10 months that the bill has been sitting in the House of Representatives and has not been approved," he was quoted by the Mexican newspaper El Universal as saying in remarks before the National Security Council. "[During that time] there have been 2,252 kidnappings, 61 hostages killed, not taking into account the 3,474 cases of telephone extortion of kidnapped migrants."

Mexican activists, attorneys argue against reforms

Not surprisingly, Mexican attorneys and human rights activists are speaking out against these expanded powers, arguing that despite the law’s good intentions, it is far too over-reaching.

See two legal analyses of the new Mexican geolocalization revisions:

Most notably, Luis Fernando García Muñoz, a Mexican law student at the University of Lund (Sweden), has published a 23-page, Spanish-language legal analysis arguing against the constitutionality of the legal changes. He has also spearheaded a petition to Mexico’s Human Rights Commission. (So far, the petition has only received around 200 signatures.)

One of the main arguments against this expansion of police power is that local Mexican judicial officials and law enforcement cannot be trusted with such unchecked power, particularly when many states have been victim to corruption by drug cartels.

"The alternative to [challenging this law] is the belief that the Attorney General, the Solicitor General of Veracruz, Chihuahua, Durango or any other state (with a history of having been infiltrated by organized crime, it’s difficult to have faith in them) can monitor your cell phone and neither you, nor a judge, nor anyone can prevent the State (or organized crime) from abusing that power," Muñoz wrote last week in a Spanish-language blog post.

Others, including the Mexican chapter of Article 19, agreed.

"The main problem with this law is that it doesn’t contemplate any warrant from the government," Antonio Martinez, the spokesperson of the group told Ars on Tuesday. "It’s outside [normal] judicial power."

On the northern side of the United States border, Katitza Rodriguez, the international rights director at the EFF, called the Mexican legal reforms a "time bomb for abuse."

"The Mexican Government knows what it's getting," she wrote in an e-mail sent to Ars on Tuesday. "This is sensitive information that reveals so much information about where people go. In an environment where it is dangerous for bloggers to report sensitive information about drug-related violence—especially since this information is rarely reported in local newspapers or on television. It is important that [the Mexican Government] protect the privacy and location of Mexicans by requiring a warrant under reasonable grounds prior to requesting the monitoring of the online information."

American attorney says Mexicans will be at higher risk

On Tuesday, an American IT attorney and legal scholar living in Mexico hand-delivered a nine-page English-language legal analysis arguing against the legal revisions to the office of the Federal Police in the state of Morelos, outside of Mexico City.

In the letter, she argues that the new law revisions are harmful to Mexicans not only due to their potential abuse by narco-infiltration, but also because it weakens existing law that requires SIM card registration.

"Under prior law, cell phone purchasers were required to register user data as a prerequisite to purchase of a cell phone," wrote Lisa Brownlee.

"Commendably, this requirement has been eliminated by LeyGeolocalización MX, and the database is scheduled to be destroyed. Remarkably, however, IFAI [the Mexican data protection authority] itself does not even know the location of that database, and copies of it are readily available for purchase. This data, coupled with real-time geolocation data, will result in unprecedented enhancement of criminals' ability to target unsuspecting victims. For this reason too, the law will cause more harm than good. It makes extant potential victims—particularly high-value ones such as family members of wealthy citizens."

We weren't told about this! It's elections time in Mexico and that means that every news media is covering that and is the perfect time for legislators to approve controversial laws... It's done every six years.

Time to move? the time to move was almost 6 years ago, when the "war on drugs" started to get really ugly.

Innocent Victims continue to pay the price with their lives.

Just a few days ago a cousin's father in law was murdered at a bar by a group of hit men, along with 14 other victims here in Chihuahua.They showed up at the Bar, asked the people in there if they knew the two people they were looking for.Then they told some people to start getting in line, others panicked and started to run. those were the ones they shot first, then they killed the rest.

A law like this is the least of our problems right now, But of course, the government will continue to take advantage of this war to introduce things like this under the war on drugs banner.Of course this would do nothing to stop the cartels.For starters a lot of the police here are directly involved with them, so this would only be used, like that lawyer says, to actually have a right to spy on high profile targets for kidnapping. (they probably do this already mind you, only this would make it official)

Murders are a daily occurrence here, most of the time between the cartels (well, most of the time cartels killing minor drug dealers really)But all too often things like this happen, all of the sake of making it illegal for people to use the drugs they will use anyway.

I keep asking the question but never get an intelligent response: If you had this power at your fingertips, would you give it up ?

Any president, prime minister, governor - whatever you want to call it - with such surveillance tools at their disposal is never going to surrender them and yield to privacy advocates, whoever they might be. And with stupid blokes actually posting their whole lives online voluntarily on their own, well, I don't really think privacy is valued as much as we suppose from the get go.

Another casualty of the drug war, but always anything but the drugs. The things they will go to to make sure they remain illegal and therefore expensive to maintain profits truly is endless.

Agreed. It's past time that ALL illegal drugs were made legal and we just focused on those who misuse those drugs to make people into easy targets for rape or give them to other people without that person's knowledge.

The Mexican police are incredibly corrupt. I live very near to "the most dangerous city in the world", Ciudad Juarez. This is a place where the police will profile you, pull you over, and ask you to pay a "tarifa" or you will have to Mexican jail. Mexican jail is NOT a place you want to be. Luckily - all the cops usually want is 20 or 30 bucks. Just showing how little integrity is worth across the border.

Not to say that some cops in the US aren't corrupt, but certainly they're less visible than in Mexico.

That's a lot easier said than done.Who do you think pays more? The government, or the Cartels?The cartels can afford to buy anyone, from common policemen, to people in office.

And if they don't want to play ball, they get killed in no time at all.

We are getting to this model in the USA very quickly. The only difference is lack of petty corruption today, but i expect to see this changing in the medium future as municipalities start running out of money to pay the cops.